1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an improved plug of the type having a fuse therein and, more particularly, to a plug having an improved arrangement for accommodating a fuse.
2. Description of the Related Art
A typical plug with a fuse therein is shown in FIG. 5 of the drawings and includes a housing 40 having a compartment 41 which is accessible via a lateral side thereof. A first conductive piece 42a is mounted to an end portion of a lateral wall which defines the compartment and electrically connected to a first blade 43a, while a second conductive piece 42b is mounted to the other end portion of the lateral wall and electrically connected to a wire 46a. A second blade 43b is electrically connected to a second wire 46b. A fuse 45 is received in the compartment 41 in which a first conductive end 45a thereof is electrically connected to the first conductive piece 42a and a second conductive end 45b thereof is electrically connected to the second conductive piece 42b. A lid 44 is removably mounted to the housing 40 to cover the fuse 45.
A disadvantage of the above-mentioned structure is that the lid 44 is pressed by the user when the user wants to put the plug into a socket (not shown) and thus tends to be damaged easily. In addition, a gap is defined between the lid 44 and the housing 40 such that water may enter the compartment 41 and thus may endanger the user. A further disadvantage of the above-mentioned structure is that the fuse 45 is received in the compartment 41 without any fastening member to assure reliable electrical connection to the conductive pieces 42a and 42b, resulting in an unstable voltage such that the fuse tends to be damaged easily. Furthermore, a volume of the compartment 41 may be enlarged after a term of use or due to thermal expansion as the housing is generally made of plastic material, which also causes unreliable electrically connection of the fuse to the conductive pieces, thereby aggravating the unstable voltage problem. Another disadvantage of the above-mentioned structure is that the lid tends to be lost and the user has to replace the whole plug as the lid is not sold independently. If the user ignores this, electricity leakage easily occurs and possibly causes injury to children and/or babies.
Therefore, there has been a long and unfulfilled need for an plug to mitigate and/or obviate the above problems.